Next week, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, two of the U.S. economy’s most important policymakers, will visit Silicon Valley — one of the U.S. economy’s most important job-creating regions. Like so many innovators, Baucus and Camp focus on writing code — not software code that governs technologies, but the U.S. tax code that governs the economy.

I meet with many Silicon Valley leaders, and unless they are a CEO, CFO or the head of a tax department, conversations about tax reform are about as well received as technical discussions about software source code with a member of Congress. Yet, just as source code is the backbone of our information technology capabilities, the tax code is our economy’s source code.

For technology to generate world changing products and services, the underlying code must be well structured, efficient and current. Users are frequently reminded to update software for efficiency and security. Well, the U.S. government has been hitting the “Remind me later” button on our tax code since 1986.

This week leading tech companies such as Intel will share with the chairmen that just as outdated software leaves our systems open to failure, our current tax code is a threat to American innovation and competitiveness.

An upgrade of our tax code is overdue, and requires a major rewrite focused on three key principles:

A globally competitive corporate tax rate;

A market-based tax system that creates an incentive for U.S.-based businesses to invest their overseas earnings in the U.S.; and

Innovation tax incentives to drive new research and development.

Problem No. 1 is our corporate tax rate. At 35 percent, it’s the world’s highest, but 20 years ago, it was one of the world’s lowest. Other countries learned that a relatively low corporate tax rate attracts business and job-creating investments. The high U.S. corporate tax rate cuts into American job creation, drives investments overseas, and saps funds from families’ paychecks. A U.S. corporate rate equal to the average in other developed countries — 25 percent — could create an estimated 581,000 new jobs annually.

Likewise, moving to a market-based tax code system would boost U.S. economic growth. Today, the earnings generated by American companies overseas are subject to taxation in those countries and the United States. Faced with two large tax bills, an estimated $1.7 trillion in U.S. company earnings remains locked overseas, when it could be invested here. This antiquated approach ignores the fact that many businesses today, large and small, sell products globally. The source code for the U.S. economy should enable U.S. companies to better compete and win in this worldwide neighborhood.

Finally, a modern tax code needs to include investment incentives that drive the development of new goods and services. In 1981, when Congress created the current R&D incentive, job growth followed across economic sectors. Many of our competitors responded with R&D tax incentives that are far more robust than that of the United States. Now, instead of having the world’s best R&D support, America ranks 27th, and is losing out on the capital investment, economic growth and the high-wage jobs that accompany R&D support.

Just as the world’s best software needs an upgrade to drive new innovation, our economy’s source code needs a major update. I hope Baucus and Camp will gain an even stronger understanding of how a modern tax code can magnify the positive impact the tech sector has on the U.S. economy and relay to their congressional colleagues the competitive urgency for action to drive new growth and opportunity for the U.S. economy.

Dean Garfield is president and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council. He wrote this for this newspaper.